Potential home buyers line up as developers release information on Flint's Smith Village development

, officials announced during a community meeting this evening at Mott Community College.

View full size(Khalil AlHajal | Flint Journal)A panel of officials speak about Flint's Smith Village residential development during a community meeting at the Mott Regional Technology Center on Tuesday.

A website for the development, www.newsmithvillage.com, will launch on Friday to provide information including financing and floor plans, said Ravi Yalamanchi, developer of Smith Village.

The development is a $16-million home construction project north of downtown Flint that will see 83 homes built for low to moderate income buyers, said architect Shannon Easter White.

She said all the homes will be energy efficient, at least 1,500 square feet in size and priced between $69,900 and $89,900.

"We think this really should be the new model for all homes in the city of Flint," she said. "It doesn't get better... We just really have knocked our own socks off with these designs."

Yalamanchi said workers will start building 10 model homes in the summer.

"We're hoping to get into the ground in June-July," he said.

City Administrator Greg Eason said the city has an agreement with the developer that 25 homes will be built by the end of 2011.

About 60 people attended the meeting, which focused on federal neighborhood stabilization funds, vacant home demolitions throughout the city and the Smith Village project.

"I've been waiting and waiting," said Lydia Handley, who's lived near the planned construction site since 1961.

"I'm so excited because they're going to do something."

She hopes new residents at Smith Village will bring new neighborhood and commercial activity to the area.

"That's a good area and we don't have stores close by any more," she said. "It's going to be so nice if they do what they say."

Real estate agent Theresa Allen said she attended the meeting to find out where to guide clients who are interested in the development.

"I've got three people lined up," she said. "I just needed to know what to do with them."

Mayor Dayne Walling said city, county, private, state and federal entities all had to partner to revive the Smith Village development, which was

"That's how work is getting done in our community," said Walling. "Block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, job by job, family by family. It's within a wider effort and a vision that we're building."

Walling said Smith Village is the only new residential subdivision in the county set to be built in 2011.

"I think it's exciting that the only new neighborhood being built anywhere in Genesee County (in 2011) is being built right in the heart of our community, actually, north of the Flint river."